Years ago, I attended a course in Vienna where a trainer explained how a leader could make a more significant impact by investing appropriate time in different areas of presence. As part of my MBA program, I was impressed by what I heard, but at the same time, I did not believe that some particular skills are needed to become more of what you are in the present. Years after, while starting a small practice as a mentor in a youth development am, I worked with a gifted young person, eager to understand the impact of behcreateseating and use it to build a game-changing company in the fintech industry. While this young person is now a trusted advisor in the fintech industry, the unit’s company is a reliable partner for many other companies and people. I have realized that teaching this per. Many after them, the same lessons involved several areas and their impact on others. Then, I found that a fab trainer used this system in the UK without being named. My contribution to the design was planning and filling it with meaning.
The simple name of this system is CARDS. What the f**ck CARDS mean, would you ask?
Well, the acronym came from five different areas for development, which every leader should pay attention to. See for yourself:
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
The strong foundation of every success starts with excellent communication. Building the skills to communicate correctly is crucial for every leader. Unfortunately, many leaders must understand the message and begin linear communication with a universal skill model. See the politicians nowadays. More than 70% of all problems are caused by miscommunication, and not even a single try from the communicators to understand how the miscommunication disrupts society and reality. People prepared in the dome of the world’s best colleges and universities need to win the trust of a broad group of people and turn them into followers. Communication is now seen as a well-prepared model and scene where you stand up and say what you think. At the same time, you do not care how you will be understood. Whoever understands you is “clever as you,” and people who do not know what you say are “not mature enough.” With this in mind, “the new leaders” create discrepancies in the companies, societies, political classes, countries, and alliances. Learning to be the best communicator insists you be flexible and, at the same time, analyze the auditorium you are speaking in front of so that you can win them from the first word and keep their interest and loyalty until the final action and result in the schedule of your plan to change the world for good.
ATTITUDE TOWARD GOAL SETTING
I have seen many people who think they are leaders because they win small everyday fights. The remarkable book “The Art of War” says: “The attitude you start your plan with can win or lose the war for you.” Translated to the current environment people exist in, it means that when starting to plan, the leader should do the planning to create something meaningful and world-changing while taking the small fights, learning from the failures, and celebrating the wins toward the path. Or said differently – if you plan small, you cannot expect significant success, and if you plan with the intent that you are preparing to lose, then you must prepare for losing against the world and take all the negativity from your loss on yours. Planning with a positive attitude is a prerequisite for finding the best and most promising complete strategies to help you change the world around you and make it a better place.
On the other hand, starting with negativity in mind is a prerequisite for failing yourself and others and getting into depression and self-isolation. Look at all the bright examples from the 20th century – Steve Jobs, who believed that he was meant to change the world and how people communicate and entertain; Jeff Bezos, who taught how to save people time by presenting to them the largest store in the world sitting on click, or even Robert Kiyosaki who gives his experience to others to help them build better future for them and their families and relatives. And these are only a few of the thousands of examples around us. So, the right attitude and building skills to plan and execute for success are crucial to delivering something unique to the world.
RELATIONSHIP SKILLS
It is so easy to build a relationship today. Only get to the first network and start “adding friends.” Right?
Well, I will have to disappoint you. The answer is NO.
Today’s leaders face unprecedented pressure to build relationships with others. Suppose there have been limited opportunities for building relationships with people like you in the past, with the strengthening of the global communication network. In that case, this happens more easily than before. Today, you can find people with similar interests and understandings in countries far from where you originally lived. And the only thing you should do is start a search through a search engine or register to an already-created network, platform, or group. And that makes it much harder for leaders to build relationships with their followers.
Building the right relationship skills to attract and sustain your followers’ tribe is the main challenge for every leader. While this type of skill is not taught in a course, and there is no universal receipt for how to build them, leaders must focus on learning from the environment, collecting practices from already successful l examples, analyzing the patterns and the environment they must be implemented in and at the end, build their unique style of how to build a lost standing relationship. The relationship-building framework and the strategy that will support it is the next crucial element for the leader to build sustainable relationships and use them to turn plans into actual wins.
DECISION-MAKING SKILLS
Most leaders fall into the trap of losing the game because of their decision-making skills. In a decisive and fast-paced world, making decisions within a slower time frame equals failure and death. Looking at the Fortune 500 companies list proves that easily. The percentage of companies in the list of more than 25 years is way smaller than those in their first ten years of life experience. And there is nothing so surprising in that. Look at the kids around you. They decide to do something, think of the consequences for a while, then plan the first three steps and move on. And now, analyze the behavior of a grown person. This same person looks at several points of view, creates much analysis, and models “what if,” then “carefully” chooses those with a bit of risk, and then reacts to the environment. It is the same with companies – the oldest of them respond like an elephant. They go slowly until they find no way left to lead them everywhere and collapse. A brilliant example is Yahoo – once named the most profitable and innovative business in the world, now the company exists at most 10% of what it has been in the past.
Decision-making skills are bound by two essential elements: self-discipline and time management.
Controlling time is essential to deliver the best decision in line with the requirements of the environment. However, at the same time, if not disciplined to do it within the time frame, the leader can quickly turn the advantage of time into a destructor and creator of negative impact.
STRESS MANAGEMENT SKILLS
We all talk about stress. Countless people, therapists, gurus, business leaders, and many more use focus to explain failures. This framework that stress can ruin even the best strategy is easily acceptable by everyone. People believe that there is something that is out of their control that creates opportunities for success or failure. Leaders, when falling, cause stress for not achieving promised goals.
What causes stress? What is the main reason for such an unstoppable power that can destroy everything the leader has fought for? While there are many theories, research, and approaches toward stress, looking at them raises two main elements that create and sustain stress – anxiety and emotions.
Anxiety is simply insecurity. The level of anxiety is connected with the level of self-deprecation. The more insignificant the leader sees himself in front of the challenges, the more the fear in them grows that the result of all the efforts can be a pure failure. The more anxious the leader is, the more opportunities for the loss they discover.
For the leader, it is essential to recognize anxiety and build defense mechanisms to fight it successfully, but without killing it.
The other part of managing stress is how we work our emotions. At the end of the twentieth century, this was called emotional intelligence. It came from long-running research on how emotions affect everyday work and personal life. Managing emotions has become an essential area for developing new leaders. Through the years, many leaders have learned different techniques to manage emotions. The quintet of these actions has been named differently every time. But the vital element of managing has always stayed the same. Managing emotions has evolved from a simple paradigm into different skills for recognizing feelings and actions and reacting to the other emotions in everyone’s life.
That is how emotional intelligence or management has become an essential building block in leadership presence and influencing others toward success.
IN CONCLUSION:
Today’s leaders face significant challenges in building and sustaining relationships with their followers and delivering results that can change their environment. Finding a method and model that helps the leader be more efficient and invest less time in fighting disturbing elements is crucial for ensuring sustainable results within time. The CARDS methodology is one of the many that can help leaders and not only them to be more productive, balanced, result-oriented, and successful achievers. Finding the method that fits their needs is a task everyone should put on their list of jobs if they want to feel that their existence is meaningful and impactful.
The Human place - a path from you to yourself 